The role of the strategy in the innovation ability of the Hungarian agricultural machinery manufacturers

The current production of the Hungarian agricultural machinery manufacturing sector, which used to see better days, lags behind the production of the previous years to a great extent. The organisational structure of the Hungarian agricultural machinery production has totally been transformed, primarily regarding its ownership structure. The general problem of this sector is that they can only spend slight amounts on development an innovation relative to foreign-owned concerns. As a consequence, loss of market is not surprising as a bit more than one-quarter (26-27 percent) of the current total domestic market turnover derives from domestic manufacturers. The extent of market loss and the general situation of the national agricultural machinery manufacturers justify that the present of this sector must be dealt with by searching the ways-out of the crisis and make steps to develop. The conclusions of our paper are based on the examination results of questionnaires and in-depth interviews that were carried out at 58 Hungarian agricultural machinery manufacturing companies. The characteristic features of the companies that were involved in the examination reflect the situation of the entire sector in Hungary properly. According to our experience and sources, the Hungarian conditions are also applicable and typical of the agricultural machinery production of the other ex-Socialist countries. In our paper first of all the method of the empirical research is presented where the structure of the questionnaire used in the research and the process of data recording and processing are shown in details. In our present study some of our results together with those based on univariate descriptive statistics are published. Besides the brand-new or highly developed products and technological (procedure) innovations, furthermore, some of the indicators of the strategy of the companies are also presented.